


Healing

by hopeforrain



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Hogwarts, Hogwarts Eighth Year, Loss, Post-War, Trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-28
Updated: 2016-01-13
Packaged: 2018-04-23 18:17:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 1,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4886872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hopeforrain/pseuds/hopeforrain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Brief stories of various characters and where they went after the war. Each chapter is about a different character (or sometimes two).</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Harry and Ron

They found a flat in Hogsmeade together, Harry and Ron. Because they couldn’t go back. They couldn’t go back to the Burrow, where they would be mothered and treated like children that they weren’t any longer. They couldn’t go back to Grimmauld Place, haunted by the ghosts of Sirius, Remus, Tonks, and everyone else they had lost. So they found a flat, near the school so Ginny and Hermione could visit on weekends. Small, so it wouldn’t take long for one to run to the other’s room to wake them from a nightmare. Neat and clean, thanks to Kreacher’s faithful help. And they trained to be aurors, and they talked with their girlfriends, and occasionally they both slept through the night. And when that happened, they woke up with smiles on their faces and giant hugs for each other, because their life became about celebrating the little things. There were so many big things that were wrong, and they both slept with their wands in their hands and woke up at two in the morning screaming for the ones they loved to run, but they could also make each other smile with jokes during training, and sometimes they snuck into Hogwarts to see their friends, and they built a life. Full of pain and fear and wanting everything to go back to when they felt safe and happy and like it was all okay. But also full of love and healing and those little moments when they thought it might all work out.


	2. Hermione

She went back to school, Hermione did. Because that’s where Hermione Granger thrived, where Hermione Granger knew who she was. And her parents wanted her to stay home, and Ron and Harry wanted her to live with them, and the Ministry wanted her to start work directly. But Hermione wanted to go to school. So she did. She accepted the Head Girl appointment gladly, and took it upon herself to be the best she could be. She worked hard and spent more time with her roommates and visited Ron and Harry on Hogsmeade weekends and lectured them about irresponsibility when they showed up at school. She kept knitting for the elves and encouraged students to mix more with other houses and studied harder than she ever had before, because she knew how to study. What she didn’t know was how to deal with the fear, with the fact that she jumped a mile every time someone touched her shoulder to get her attention, with the fact that she was terrified of sudden noises and couldn’t sleep through the night anymore. She didn’t know how to deal with not having her best friends constantly at her side, or how to make her parents believe she was okay, knowing that if they thought she wasn’t, they would bring her home. So she did what Hermione did: she went to the library. And when the Hogwarts library failed her for the first time in over seven years, she went to muggle libraries. And she found books about PTSD, and how to find healing after traumatic events. So she went to Professor Mcgonagall and shared her findings, and asked if they could try to find a counselor to help with the students. And they did. And she still cried at night, and she still had nightmares, and she still had flashbacks and fear and all kinds of horrific aftershocks from the war. But she grew to be okay in the place where she had first found who she was.


	3. George

He moved back home, because he couldn’t keep living in that flat in Diagon Alley without Fred. And he shut himself away in Ron’s old room, refusing to talk to anyone, because no one could possibly be hurting as badly as he was. His mother tried to help, but she didn’t know how to tell him that they all had to keep living through unbelievable pain and that he wasn’t alone. She couldn’t bring herself to tell him that he had to keep fighting, because she had lost one son, but it was like she had lost two. She knew he wouldn’t listen to her, his old mum, who didn’t know what it was to lose her other half. So she brought other people by and sent them to his room to try and get him to talk, but Bill, Ron, Ginny, Harry, Lee, and the counselor were all sent away with black eyes, split lips, tears in their eyes from the hurtful words. No one understood that George didn’t want to talk about it, and when they tried, he lashed out. So Molly found the last person she thought he might listen to. And Angelina went upstairs to George’s room and just sat on the floor. And she sat so long that he forgot she was there, and he started talking to himself. And she sat. And when he cried, she reached up and put a hand on his back, and she cried with him, and she didn’t try to tell him that she knew or understood. She just let him cry, and she summoned tea and food from the kitchen, and they just sat together, and close to a day later, she coaxed him downstairs, where his family wrapped him in their arms.


	4. Lavender

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> She's not dead. I refuse to accept movie canon.

She stayed in the hospital for months. She knew what had happened, but everyone else liked to pretend that it was all normal, like she didn’t have horrific scars spread across her face and chest. They told her that it was all okay, that she’d be perfectly normal, but when they thought she was asleep, she heard what her family and the doctors said. “Scarred for life… Never find a husband… Monster… Damaged…” And she figured they were right. The wizarding world would call her a hero to her face, and then turn her away whenever she asked for a job. “No openings,” they would say, or “we just don’t think the job is right for you.” So, when they let her out of St. Mungo’s, she left magic behind. She mastered the art of makeup and used that skill to get a job in a cosmetics shop. She gave makeovers and went on casual dates and had a habit of going out on Sunday nights to get a really good steak at a muggle restaurant. And she had Friday night dinners with Dean and Seamus, and sometimes Parvati would come so the whole gang could be together again, and they talked about anything except school and the scars hidden underneath her heavy makeup. She made a life for herself, one that involved putting her wand up on a shelf in her closet and getting a cat or two or seven and keeping everyone she met at an arm’s length so they wouldn’t find out her secrets. She built her life around solitude, but always knew that, when she was ready, she would be welcomed back by her friends with open arms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I tried really hard to make the ending vaguely positive, but I just think Lavender has a sad story after book 7.


	5. Justin

Everyone had been through hell that year. But some people just weren’t cut out for going back to the world where hell had existed. So Justin Finch-Fletchley left. He left the world that had made his existence a crime. He burned his wand and with it all the connections he had spent the last seven years making and tried to live in a world where the high school diploma he didn’t have was the key to having any kind of life. He returned to his parents and found a job at a department store that was mindless enough that he could spend his days creating a new story. He made a fictional Justin, one who hadn’t wasted seven years in a world that hated him. And when he met a beautiful man online, he showed him that fictional Justin. The beautiful man and Justin fell in love, and they built a life together. A life where magic only existed in the fairy tales Justin had grown up hearing. He no longer wished they were real.


End file.
